This invention relates to water quality and more particularly to methods and apparatus for feeding controlled amounts of chemicals such as chelating agents, perfumes, microbiocides and filtration aids to hot tubs, spas, cooling towers, swimming pools, and the like.
In home swimming pools, and in the newly popular hot tubs and spas it is almost always necessary to filter and recirculate the water and to add certain chemicals such as organic flocculating agents which can greatly improve the effectiveness of filters in removing impurities.
Whether it be the chlorination or fluoridation of drinking water supplies, the addition of organic flocculants and alum, to improve the effectiveness of filters, or the addition of chelating agents to limit the formation of scale in boilers, it is known to provide apparatus known as a "feeder" to meter predetermined amounts of such chemicals into the water. This is done in large public and commercial systems; but the necessary capital investment for such equipment has been impractical for the operator of a home pool or small cooling tower. To make up for the lack of automatic equipment the users of such small systems have been obliged to forego their advantages of the chemicals or to maintain a veritable chemistry laboratory with bottles of chemicals, many of them corrosive or poisonous, and apparatus to measure and mix them.